


Rose: Seer in the Shadows

by BlameMyMuses



Series: Apotheosis [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 16:37:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7060630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlameMyMuses/pseuds/BlameMyMuses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose has always been good at learning secrets, in this life and in her last. The difference is that in this life, she knows almost at once that she is something divine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rose: Seer in the Shadows

There is nothing quite like the sensation of waking up one morning, with the certain knowledge that you were once a god. And yet, that is how every morning begins for you.

 

Wake up. Stretch. Roll out of bed and kneel as if to pray…

 

And then stop. Remember who you truly are.

 

… smile to yourself, and bow your head anyway, because you never know who is watching.

 

You know your family suspects. Your mother is forever plying you with religious totems, or suggesting you go down to the temple to listen to the holy songs, or that you talk to the elders about Ishvala and his plan for his people. You smile, and do so with a fervor and passion that would convince anyone but your darling mother… The elders fully expect you to take holy orders when you come of age, and you honestly quite enjoy the scripture for its beauty and its poetry, and the masterful storytelling found therein.

 

It’s just you would really rather be the one writing the scripture than reading it.

 

Once upon a time, you dreamed you wrote of your own rise to divinity.

But what no one knows, what no one but your mother suspects, is that you are a liar. Oh, you speak only the truth, you’ve never  _ spoken  _ a lie…but you have implied one thing and meant another, that is certain. And you are making your plans, though none know it yet, to leave your people, your “god” and to find your dear ones, your siblings from before the world began.

 

You are a seer, a true one.

 

Prophets like Logue Lowe are all well and good, but they would never have had even a glimmer of such an ability, were you not in the world and dreaming. Your dreams are all prophetic, and sometimes you can’t help but share. It took you a long while to understand that, and that realization became the foundation upon which you began to build an understanding of yourself, of your past, from before you were born to the woman who calls herself your mother.

 

You know better. You have no mortal mother. None of you gods do.

 

***

 

When you are newly fourteen, you dream there will be an earthquake, one that will bring destruction to an entire city, and death in its shadow. There is a smile on your lips when you wake up that morning, because you saw a face as dear to you as the sun, as familiar as the moon.

 

The earthquake happens six months later. Scattered pages of Central City’s many newspapers blow through your slum, all reporting the death toll.

 

You don’t go into the main parts of the city, but you stand on the border, waiting. Two weeks after the quake, the wind brings you the pages you wanted. Survivors, still looking for their families. Names and photos, all in a neat column down the side of the front page.

 

You run a finger down until you find him. The grey-tone doesn’t do him justice, and there are changes to his appearance like there have been changes to your own, but it’s  _ him _ . It doesn’t matter, that the name beside the photo isn’t quite right, either. If there is one thing you Ishvalans  _ do  _ have right, it is the importance of a name, and not everyone goes by their proper one.

 

You’d know John Egbert anywhere.

 

Six gods left to find.

 

***

 

Over the next two years, they appear in flashes of premonition, like lights streaming through the clouds.

 

Jade and Dirk are somewhere near each other, a place that smells of machine oil, and metal in sunlight. Jane is someplace distant, and not entirely safe, but she’s confident and that’s something at least. Jake seems to be near Creta, possibly the rural area outside Pendleton, if the skirmishes you glimpse are any indication. Dave is far in the opposite direction, desert and heat all around him, the shadows of ruined buildings rising high over his shoulder.

 

You never hoped to catch a glimpse of Roxy, given her particular talents.

 

So when she turns up on your doorstep, the night of your sixteenth birthday, you are honestly shocked.

 

She smiles at you, holds out a hand.

 

“ Rose,” she says, and her hand is warm and real in yours, and she uses your real name, the secret one. “I’ve been looking for you. We’ve got something important we have to do.”

 

You smile back.

 

“ Of course,” you say, your voice soft, unwilling to wake your family. You’ve been planning to leave anyway. You had an idea that you might sneak away soon, and here she is, to whisk you away into the darkness. “I have a bag ready. We should go. Before dawn.”

 

“ They won’t see us anyway,” she says, but she helps you pull your scarf up higher over your bright hair. Her hair is as white as yours, her skin as dark, and Ishvalans are noticeable in Central.

 

You’re gods. You’re noticeable wherever you go…unless you go there with Roxy.

 

***

 

You creep away from the slum you grew up in, away from the city you have never left.

 

You head south, first, to find John.

 

The rest will join you in time.

 

You can See it.


End file.
